Digi Savage

“Digi-Savage” which was organized by the Rotaract Club of Colombo Mid-Town, under the Avenue of Professional Development, was held on the 25^th of August 2019 at Coco Space. It was a workshop that focused on Social Media platforms and its real purpose in an ever-changing digital era like today.

Here’s an extract from the Event-Description that captured the purpose of the workshop.

“Social Media has taken over the communication platforms in this digital era. Choosing and using the right platform to communicate the right message is becoming important day by day, and it is important that we learn how to use digital platforms to communicate with the greatest impact, which is appealing to our target audience. Digital literacy is becoming an important skill in the 21^st century, and its time we learn how to use these digital platforms effectively to reach to our target market better.”

Rtr. Ovin Bimsara from RACUOCFMF (Middle) with Rtr. Nipun Alwis (Left)
and Rtr. Akhila Adhishwara (Right)

The workshop was carried out by members from the Rotaract Club of Colombo Mid-Town itself.

The first few sessions were conducted by Rtr. PP. Akhila Adhishwara – The Digital Media Marketing Team Leader at Digi-Brush Productions Pvt. Ltd. He started off by reminding the audience that every social media user represents themselves to a large community with approximately 1.6 Billion Facebook users alone and 2.8 Billion Facebook related users.

Firstly, he touched upon the “Do’s and Don’ts” regarding Facebook.
Here’s a list of some of them;

• Use a photo of yourself instead of something / someone else. (Eg: A rose-flower or a quote from Mr. Nelson Mandela wouldn’t exactly represent you.)
• Check every friend request before accepting them. This helps in the quality of networking.
  (Don’t just accept them for the sake of increasing your friend-count)
• Be mindful with your “Privacy” settings in your profile and make use of “Lists” if necessary after studying your audience. (Because although you can delete content that has been posted, it might be too late)
• Use the “Report” function when necessary and select the right category in order to make it an effective reporting procedure.
• When it comes to sharing content, consent and credits are important. Be mindful of content authenticity as well since whatever you post, silently talks about you too. Also, try to have considerable time gaps in between each post because if your content starts to flood the feed of another person, it can agitate him/her. (Do not spam!) However, if you are the agitated party, you can simply “Un-follow” that particular profile without “Un-friending” in the first instance itself.
• When tagging people especially in a group photo, it is better if you can get their consent. (How another person looks matters, just as much as how you look)

Secondly, he explained about the image driven platform – Instagram where consistency is key since it uses Artificial Intelligence (A.I) based algorithms, that are capable of identifying our patterns of posting content.

Rtr. PP. Akhila Adhishwara
explaining about Instagram

Here’s a few useful Instagram related tips and insights that were shared;

• Try to maintain a theme. (In a way this would help in attracting followers who has the same interests as yours.)
• Be creative and unique. Yet be real with your content at the same time. It’s nice to find inspiration from other people, but do not copy.
• Be mindful about the time when uploading posts. You have to first thoroughly understand your audience for that. In general, 6 to 9 p.m is considered the peak time.
• Focus on image quality over quantity. Do not overuse filters. (Since the visual appeal is significant.)
• Engagement is highly important! If someone comments or messages, reply to them. After all we’re talking about “Social” Media – Platforms, which are meant for “Socialization.”
• Follow “Hashtags” like how you follow people. When using Hashtags in a caption, meaningfully include them at the end without cluttering the caption by including them in the middle of the text. The maximum number of Hashtags you can use in a post caption is 30.
• Never pay for likes and followers and do not use third party scheduling apps. That may lead to your profile being under-rated by Instagram and consequently your posts will be shown to a smaller audience thereafter.
• When it comes to your feed, know that it does not show the most recent posts always. First preference is automatically given to posts of your interest. (As identified by Instagram)

Thirdly he explained about LinkedIn – The platform for professional networking, in which there are approximately 1.1 Million users in Sri Lanka.

Rtr. PP. Akhila Adhishwara
explaining about LinkedIn

Here’s what was learned about appropriately using LinkedIn;

• Do not stalk profiles because LinkedIn is not anonymous and the person would receive a notification of your profile visit.
• A professional yet creative profile description and useful testimonials from individuals you have worked with will be very strong tools on this platform. Always try to create a professional and realistic identity that would impress your potential employers and investors.
• Wrong spellings and grammar would create a very negative impression
• Be active. Manage and update your profile regularly.
• Stay away from online arguments.
• Making formal apologies when necessary. It is completely fine and has to be done.

The second main session was conducted by Rtr. Shenadi Basnayake – A Digital Marketer at Neo@Ogilvy Sri Lanka, a leading Digital Media Agency. She widely spoke about YouTube by firstly outlining the “Ecosystem” of YouTube briefly. It consists of 3 main parties – Creators, Advertisers and Users.

Rtr. Shenadi Basnayake
explaining about YouTube

Further, she gave a few reasons as to why YouTube stands out from other social media platforms;

1. YouTube has rich and diverse content (Back in the day when it started it was just simple videos. But now we use YouTube to even watch various TV Shows and Teledramas!)
2. Creator – User engagement is very effective.
3. Broad User – User connections can be built easily and quickly.

Then she explained the process of building a YouTube channel step by step by comparing it to creating a Facebook Profile. According to her, here’s a few best practices related to YouTube. (Mainly, on a personal level)

• Understand the interest of the audience and have a category in mind regarding your content.
• Engage as much as you can and keep them informed.
• Show the audience who you are at least once in a while, if your videos don’t reveal who you are.
• Have meaningful and attractive thumbnails.
• Push for subscriptions as much as you can.
• Show up consistently.

Finally, the workshop came to an end after a brief “Q & A” session by both Speakers, followed by refreshments and a group picture!

Kudos! to our comrades from the Rotaract Club of Colombo Mid-Town for organizing an absolutely useful and timely event of this kind!

Image Courtesy : The Rotaract Club of Colombo MidTown